Late last night, I drive down to the darkest part of San Jose, to
Precision Frame and Axle. These guys come highly recommended, are
knowledgable about TRs, but have a lousy address! Anyway, I find the
place, wonder how I'm going to get into the high fenced area to drop
off my keys. Park, wander around. Nothing. No gate, no drop box,
nothing. There's a light across the street at the ice cream factory, so
I go in and ask -- he doesn't know anything, but volunteers to deliver
my keys in the morning. Seems better than leaving them in the trunk, so
I leave them.
And don't sleep very well.
Anyway, I call this morning, the guy had just delivered the keys, all
was well, they can probably do the work while I'm out of town for the
next week. They'll call with an estimate.
They just called. "Is there something I'm missing here? I looked at it
for an hour, and can't find any frame damage." So I tell him the story
of Alice's Restaurant and the half a ton of garbage and the alignment
and the rest and he says "The frame is perfect -- straight as a rail.
But the alignment sucks." The rear tracking is off, toe is slightly
bogus, camber is weird. The front has +5 castor on the left, +1 on the
right "That'll pull like crazy" "Yep, it does", positive camber.
OK, OK, can he fix it? Yup. The rear takes four hours of apparently
heating the trailing arm and pulling it so the rear tracks the front,
and fiddling with shims for the rest. The front alignment will take two
hours or so to get everything centered and perfect.
Well, as I said on another list not too long ago, I plan to keep this
car a long long time. Another $300 won't matter. So when I get back,
she should steer LOTS better. I'll let y'all know. If I remember, I'm
going to go by tonight with the new rear suspension bushings I've been
meaning to install.
What an education!
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